


The Opposite of Love

by Morvith



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bodyswap, Canon Queer Character of Color, Canon Queer Relationship, Community: theoldguardkinkmeme, Cuddling, M/M, Nicky and Joe never got together AU, Past Violence, Post-Canon, Smoking, hand-holding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:27:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27107950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morvith/pseuds/Morvith
Summary: Nicky and Joe always had each other, they are destined to be together. It couldn't possibly be any other way, right?Wrong. The immortals are destined to meet each other, but the relationships they build are entirely up to them. All relationships require work.Nicky and Joe are in love. Yusuf and Nicolò are most definitely not. Somehow, the four of them have just traded places...
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolo di Genova, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 55
Kudos: 227





	1. Nicolò and Yusuf

**Author's Note:**

> The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference - Elie Wiesel

It takes him a while to find Yusuf, mostly because he doesn't want to ask the others: they all look at him as though he should already know, as though there's something fundamentally wrong with him for asking. He gets that, really, he does, but it's still so fucking annoying.

Eventually, he finds him outside, a good way away from the house, sitting on the ground with one of his ubiquitous sketchbooks. Perhaps he should have known, after all: Yusuf is not exactly fond of mountains, but he can't resist a good view.

As he comes closer, he realizes that he has no pencil in hand, only the sketchbook open on his knees. He is turning the pages slowly, carefully, lingering on every single one as though he has never seen them before – because, of course, he hasn't. It's not his sketchbook, is it?

He's still several feet away when Yusuf greets him without raising his head. “Nicolò.”

“Yusuf.” He sits down on the grass next to him without asking for permission, well out of reach but close enough to peer at the sketchbook over his shoulder.

Yes, definitely not his. He's not terribly interested in Yusuf's art, but he has inevitably seen some of his works. Yusuf, the man currently sitting beside him, rarely draws portraits and definitely favours landscapes or traditional patterns.

The sketchbook before him is nothing but portraits. Mostly of Nicolò himself. Well, the other Nicolò, whose body he is currently inhabiting. Technically, he considers, it's still his body: it looks identical down to the smallest scar, it doesn't feel any different except for slightly longer hair than usual.

It should feel weirder, seeing his face, his body drawn over and over again in Yusuf's sketchbook, but after the day he's having – they're both having, honestly – it's only one more strange thing, a pebble in the ocean.

“The house got too small for you too, didn't it?” Yusuf says, skimming over several drawings.

It takes Nicolò a second to realize that yes, he is actually talking to him. If Quynh and Andy could see them right now, they'd faint from the shock. Though if their counterparts are currently in their universe, in their bodies, perhaps they alreay have.

He takes a deep breath. “They do mean well. It's probably even harder for them than it is for us.”

Yusuf turns the page and stops. Nicolò is actually dressed in this one, leaning against some kind of railing neither of them recognizes, but there's still something unbearably intimate, loving in the way the other Yusuf has drawn him. This feels like a real trespass. Yusuf reaches for the paper only to stop himself halfway, dropping his hand back to the side. “You look...happy,” he whispers. “I've never seen you look like this.”

“I don't think I've ever looked like that.” Nicolò shrugs. He expects Yusuf to move on to the next drawing, but he doesn't. “Probably artistic license.”

“Do you miss it?” Yusuf can feel Nicolò's startled eyes on him, but he can't look away from the drawing.

“How can you miss what you never had? Besides, you're asking the wrong one.” There's a clear note of irritation in his voice. Only one day and even Nicolò's seemingly endless patience is running out.

“Are...” How to call them? They are not Andy, not Quynh, not Booker and Nile – or rather they are, and they are not and it's terribly frustrating. “...the others bothering you?”

Nicolò huffs, looking down at the drawing again before forcefully averting his eyes. “I hate how they look at me. As if I'm broken.”

“I suppose, in their eyes, we are.”

Another huff. “It just seems so unbelievable. You and I...” he shakes his head. “I can't imagine it. Literally can't imagine it. Can you?”

Yusuf tries. He really does, but... Nicolò? No. His mind is a blank canvas, resisting all attemps to be filled. “I can't, either.”

“Let alone as this sort of... grand romance. The love of a lifetime, of centuries! Bah!” He quickly glances around, making sure none of the others have followed them out. “Do you think maybe they just... settled? For each other? Immortality can be lonely.” He adds defensively.

Yusuf feels torn. Part of him wants to agree with him because it's the only explanation that makes sense, really. The part of him that recognizes his own hand in the sketches, however, cannot do it. “Neither of us is the settling kind.”

It's a lie, of course. Their very existance means having to compromise, to adapt, to settle for what they can have. Still, Nicolò doesn't call him out on it.

“Anyway, Quynh and Andy have that.”

“Had.” Nicolò shudders. “And we saw how it turned out.”

“It hasn't turned out yet. They might still find a way back to each other.” Yusuf argues.

Nicolò doesn't say a word, simply casts him one of his pitying glares – the ones that say he is being bone-headedly, pathetically wrong and remind him so much of the condescending Crusader he had been.

Admittedly, bringing up Andy and Quynh is... not the best of ideas. Not after this morning's revelations.

Yusuf closes his eyes and rubs a hand over his face. They are not friends, he and Nicolò. They don't hate each other, either, not anymore, but the best they have achieved is cold, polite professionalism when they absolutely have to work together – Andy's choice, never theirs.

Still, he has wronged him. He owes him an apology.

“I didn't mean it. About you and the...and Quynh's fate. I didn't mean it.”

Nicolò huffs. “Don't lie, Yusuf. There's no need.”

“I'm not lying! Nobody deserves that. I just... I was tired, and angry and Andy was, you remember how she was...” It is hard, so hard to talk to Nicolò, to admit this to him. “The truth is, I blamed myself. They had asked me to go with them but I decided not to. I decided to go East instead. If I had gone with them...”

“Perhaps it would have been you in the iron maiden.” Nicolò interrupts dryly. “Or Andy, or both. You cannot know. What's done is done.”

“It was still a cruel thing to say.”

“It's not like you meant me to overhear. I've said worse, and to your face, too.”

“I shouldn't have said that at all! Especially after...” So difficult, so very difficult. “After you saved Andy. You were there for her while I was miles away. I felt guilty and I took it out on you.”

Nicolò snorts again and almost smiles. “We do that a lot.”

“It's a bad habit.”

“Hard to break, after a thousand years.” Nicolò points out, devastatingly honest as usual.

It's an acknowledgment of sorts, but neither of them knows what to do with it.

Yusuf looks back down at the sketchbook, turns more pages. There's Andy, Booker, a portrait of Quynh done from memory – he made those, too, one of the very few portraits he ever drew. A street somewhere Yusuf doesn't recognize.

The other Yusuf hasn't drawn himself here, if he even does. It's a ridiculous thought, Yusuf is currently inside his body, all he needs to see him is a mirror. Except he wouldn't see the other Yusuf, would he? Only himself, with longer hair and a longer beard. No trace of the other man's thoughts and feelings at all. No explanations, no clues, no idea of who this other Yusuf is except, apparently, half of Joe-and-Nicky.

He starts flipping the pages backwards, to a sketch he saw before Nicolò arrived. The other Nicolò's face against a pillow, presumably on a bed, turned to look at somebody – the other Yusuf – on his right, his eyes shining even in black and white. There's also the only image of the other Yusuf in the entire sketchbook, if he can call it so – his forearm outstretched, emerging from the blank space, his hand cupping Nicolò's cheek. His thumb on his lips.

He had not lingered over this particular drawing at first. He does so now.

“Yet, it could have been us.” Even saying it out loud doesn't make it more real, more believable, for all that it is the truth.

Nicolò doesn't sigh, doesn't huff, doesn't even shift a little, perfectly still as only a sniper can be. “I don't think so.”

“Why?”

“Because it doesn't matter what...” he gestures vaguely back to the safehouse somewhere below and out of sight. “...the others think. It wasn't just one thing that went wrong, just one detail they can fix. It can't have been. It must have been many things, some big and some small, and by now it has been almost a thousand years.” He glances at the drawing and looks away, scowling. “We are not them. We never were. We are us and we don't need fixing.”

He sounds so sure, so certain. As usual. It's more comforting than Yusuf is willing to admit, especially after hours and hours of Andy, Quynh, Booker and Nile looking at them like that.

“Besides,” Nicolò continues. “It's not like our lives were empty. There were other people.” He unconsciously raises his hand to his neck, only to grimace and drop it again when he finds it bare. The other Nicolò is wearing his necklace now – whatever is on it.

“Other men, you mean.” That had been a surprise, too, though certainly not today's greatest.

Nicolò rolls his eyes. “Yes, well, that particular cat is out of the bag, isn't it? The point is, I'm not sure I'd trade them.”

Yusuf closes his eyes for a moment, remembering the people he has loved and lost. There aren't as many as there could be because it is tiring, exhausting even – the fear, the lying, the clock always, always ticking – yet sometimes it cannot be helped. He can't stop himself from falling any more than he can stop the sun from rising.

He thinks of Andy and Quynh, how they used to be and how, hopefully, they can be again. Nicolò is right, immortality can be awfully lonely, even if he has tried to get what companionship he can. Nicolò, it seems, has done the same.

“Is that why you sing in Polish when you get drunk?”

Nicolò presses his lips together, his fingers aching for his missing necklace again. “Yes. That's why.”

He doesn't say more. Again, typical Nicolò, keeping everything close to his chest.

Yusuf looks back down at the sketchbook. “I still don't understand how they did it. I really don't.”

Nicolò snorts again. “Nobody does, it seems, except our doubles and even if they were here, I wouldn't ask them.”

Yusuf can see the wisdom in that stance. He closes the sketchbook. “The real question is, how do we go back home?”

“Hell if I know.” Nicolò leans back on his elbows. “I can't think we are meant to stay, though. It makes no sense.”

“It makes no sense we were brought here in first place,” Yusuf grumbles. “Though I suppose our Andy and our Quynh will be happy: we finally know what it takes to make us talk outside of a mission.”

Nicolò, unexpectedly, laughs. “Only one small thing like universe hopping! They'll never let us live it down.”

“You know it.”

The truth of that casual remark hits him suddenly. Nicolò is, once again, the only one who knows – as it was at the beginning, so long ago.

Yusuf sighs. This doesn't feel like a second chance, only an exercise in futility. There's too much between them, too much and not enough at the same time.

All they want is to be back home, where things make sense. “How do you think it will work? We'll just... go to bed tonight and wake up home tomorrow? Could it really be as easy as that?”

“I really hope so.” Nicolò says. “Especially because I have no idea what to do otherwise. We didn't cause it, I'm pretty sure our doubles didn't cause it, so...” He finishes his sentence with a deep shrug.

“I hope you are right.” One day here was more than enough. Yusuf's gaze lands on the sketchbook again. “Should we write them something? Leave them a note?”

Nicolò hesitates. “If you want. I don't know what to tell them.”

Right. What to say? Don't worry about us, we are fine? Would they even believe it, when none of the others do? “Neither do I. Mostly, I have questions, but how would we ever get answers?”

Would the answers matter at all, beyond satisying his curiosity? Would they only raise more, cause more confusion?

Yusuf sighs and rubs a hand over his eyes. “I hope you are right. I'm more than ready to go home.”


	2. Joe and Nicky

It's a very long five minutes before he can follow Joe outside, sneaking through the door like a thief. He doesn't run, but he picks up his pace, walking briskly upwards until the house is out of sight.

Joe is sitting in his usual place – the open meadow from which he can see the entire valley spread out underneath, a closed sketchbook on his knees and a cigarette between his lips.

Nicky drops down next to him without a word, pressing their bodies together from foot to shoulder. Some of the tension he has been carrying all day drains away from him.

Joe presses back against him, breathing deeply like a man savouring every mouthful of clean air. “ _Ya amar_ ,” he says softly, quietly, the words spilling from his heart to his lips.

“ _Sono qui, amore_.” Nicky replies, finally free to switch to Italian. His left hand snatches the cigarette from Joe's mouth and brings it to his mouth, his lips exactly in the same spot where Joe's have been.

It usually makes Joe laugh, but this time all he can manage is a smile – still infinitely precious, as all Joe's smiles are. “If you want a kiss, you know you don't even have to ask.”

“You know I do.” He doesn't say, you know we can't because, well... Joe knows. These bodies might look like theirs down to the smallest scar, but they are not. Just knowing this makes them feel uncomfortable, constrained, like their skin is suddenly too small.

The way the others look at them even when they are just standing too close – apparently, anything under three feet is “too close” – does not help.

He blows out another puff of smoke, then offers him the cigarette back.

Joe's fingers brush against Nicky's as he takes it. “You took the necklace off.”

“It's not mine, it felt wrong to wear it. Nile told me what it is, though: it's the Black Madonna of Czestochowa. Or so he told her.” His Joe leaves backup sketchbooks and pencils in every safehouse, and so does the one who lives here. His own double, instead, has a cache of medals of the Black Madonna of Czestochowa – and only the Black Madonna of Czestochowa – so he is never without.

Nicky had wondered at first, but now he has a pretty good idea of what it means.

“And you're supposed to speak Polish.” More than speak it: Polish is supposed to be this Nicolò's second language of choice. The others had not reacted well to Nicky's basic, rusty Polish. Or his fluent Arabic. Or Joe's Italian.

A world where they don't speak each other's languages, where they weren't lovers, nor friends, not even enemies...a world where they were nothing at all, even enmity worn down by time and distance into cold indifference.

This is one version of Hell neither of them had ever considered.

His hands ache for Nicky's skin, his lips for his and it's so deeply unfair, their safehouses and their family had always been the one place where they were accepted, where they didn't have to be on guard no matter the current moral climate outside... But this is not their place.

Even as they crave more, all the comfort they can have is their warmth side by side and a cigarette passed back and forth.

Nicky gestures that he wants it back, but instead of handing it to him, Joe holds it up to his lips. Nicky hesitates before he leans forward and takes it, deliberately pressing his lips against Joe's fingers for a second longer than necessary in a not-quite-kiss.

It's pushing it, both of them know, but all they have had so far was that one kiss this morning, the one that sparkled a veritable series of explosions and almost several deaths.

“At least your taste in cigarettes hasn't changed.” He means it as a joke, but Joe tenses again. “Sorry.”

“Don't. This is not your fault.”

Nicky holds the smoke in a fraction of second longer. “Maybe it is.”

“What do you mean?”

He offers the cigarette back like an apology. “Just... I was talking to Sébastien the other day about what he said in the lab, that you and I always had each other.”

“What did you tell him?”

Nicky takes a deep breath. “That he's full of shit and he has no idea what we were like at the start. He's a fool if he thinks getting here was quick or easy or that we would have made it to almost a thousand years together without putting in some damn hard work.”

For several moments, Joe is silent, watching the smoke rising. “If you had asked me yesterday,” he says at last, his voice unbearably sad. “I would have said there couldn't be a world where we weren't together. I thought you believed so, too.”

“You're my heart and soul, Joe, don't ever doubt it. But...” Nicky bites his lips, choosing his next words with every care. “...I've never forgotten how lucky I am to have you. I believe, no, I _know_ we were fated to meet, but it was not destiny that made you offer me your hand, nor gave me the wisdom to accept it. Or that held our fragile truce together until it turned into something stronger, deeper.” He lays a hand on his thigh, grounding both of them. “I haven't forgotten all the ways it could have gone wrong, all the days it almost did. I know you haven't, either.”

It's true. Centuries later, Joe still remembers storming out of their lodgings in Constantinople and wandering around the city for hours without seeing a single thing. The look on Nicky's face when he eventually came back. He remembers Nicky doing the same in Ajmer and the acrid fear that he would never return. Beyond that, there had been Shangai, Palermo, Samarkand, several villages scattered between Europe, Africa and Asia whose names he can no longer recall and many nameless spots by the roadside or even at sea.

They have fought in every possible way two human beings can fight: sullen silences, hissed insults, recriminations shouted at the top of their lungs, passive-aggressive remarks, even dagger-sharp words aimed at the softest spots for the sole purpose to hurt and tear and maim. Some lines they have skirted, teetering on the edge before pulling back at the very last second, some they have downright crossed. 

Some fights turned into actual fights – with their bare hands, not their swords, not anymore, no matter how incandescently angry he felt or how bitingly cold Nicolò got. Some fizzled out, little more than temporary irritations, others lingered. They learned when to give each other space and when to talk, to apologize by words or deeds, to forgive. There had been some really fantastic make-up sex, too, but it's best not to dwell on those memories right now.

Their shared cigarette has almost burned down, so Joe stubs it out in the cup he grabbed as makeshift ashtray. He takes Nicky's hand in his own, intertwining their fingers. “You are right, I haven't. I just don't like to think of those times.”

“Me neither, I assure you. I just don't want to take you for granted – you, our time, our lives.”

“And you think that's the reason why we are here and they, presumably, are in our place?” He frowns. “Shouldn't Sébastien be here in that case? Besides, we don't even know how this happened.”

Nicky shrugs a little, careful not to jostle him too much. “That's all I got. Unless Sébastien, Nile, Andy and Quynh all found us particularly irritating last night and wished we weren't quite so in love...”

Joe snorts. “We were no different than usual. Moreover, Andy and Quynh would not have the proverbial leg to stand on! Just because Sébastien and Nile haven't seen them at their worst yet....”

“So we got nothing. I'm pretty sure it wasn't our doubles.”

“Maybe their...their team wished they'd get along better?” Joe really can't bring himself to call them a family. This Quynh and this Andy had been a family. They had been the sun, with this Yusuf and this Nicolò two lonely planets orbiting around them and when Quynh was lost...it had left them splintered, unmoored. Their doubles tried their best, he knows they did even without asking, but it hadn't been enough.

He and Nicky hadn't quite been enough, either, nothing could be, but somehow they had managed more than this, perhaps _because_ they were Joe-and-Nicky rather than in spite of it. Andromache wouldn't be Andromache if she weren't so fiercely independent, but their Andy, for all her resistance, had known she could count on them. That they would carry her and lean on each other when the weight of their loss became too much.

“I'm not asking them.” Nicky shivers. “I hate to see them like this. I wish I could do _something_ , but...” He trails off, closing his eyes with a frustrated sigh.

Joe lets go of Nicky's hand and wraps his arm around his shoulders, pulling him closer. Nicky's arm moves to his waist, his hand now resting on his hip. “But it's not our place and it has been too long.” A downside of immortality that's rarely mentioned: they all tend to get set in their ways. “We don't know them, not really.”

Another frustrated sigh. “I know. It's just... it's hard.” Nicky opens his eyes, casting a guilty glance toward the house. “I never thought it would make such a difference, you know? To us, yes, obviously, but not... not to them. I thought they'd be okay.”

“If you asked them, they'd tell you they are.”

Nicky snorts. “Really? I wish they'd act like it, then.”

Joe rubs soothing circles against his back. “To be fair, we must be quite a shock to them.”

“True, though I wonder how much of a shock our own doubles had...” Nicky again snorts, vaguely amused. “Especially when they woke up.”

Joe doesn't know whether to laugh or wince. He hopes for his family's sake that they were all already awake, especially Nile and Quynh. “You are taking this remarkably well.”

Nicky shifts a bit and leans his head against his shoulder. “Only because you are here with me. Besides, I live in the world where we got it right.”

“Hopefully, we'll be back there soon.”

Nicky nods. His gaze lands on the sketchbook, which he had almost forgotten. “Were you looking at his drawings?”

Joe huffs. “I tried. It's just...”

“Oh, come on, there can't be a world where you can't draw. That, I refuse to believe!”

His love's outraged tone draws a chuckle from him. “It's not that. Just... there's not a single drawing of you. Not one.”

“Oh. Well, it makes sense. What do you draw here, then? The others?”

Joe shakes his head. “There's a sketch of Quynh, but that's it. The rest is landscapes, or patterns.”

“You do find those soothing. I'm glad you have it here.”

Joe scowls down at the sketchbook as though it were responsible for all this universe's problems. “I'd rather have you. If I had to choose between you and art...”

“You don't.” Nicky cuts him off. “And you'll never have to. I'd never want you to make yourself less for me.”

“It feels like I failed you all,” Joe whispers, haunted. “And I don't even know how.”

“Don't take it all on you, _hayati_. I'm sure I have my share of responsibilities.”

Joe moves his hand, his fingers brushing against Nicky's neck. “At least you weren't completey alone. Even if he is not you, not really, not anymore, I couldn't bear it.”

“You figured it out, too?” Nicky barely makes it a question, because of course he would.

“I have known you for nearly a thousand years, _amore mio_.”

While none of them are particularly materialistic, his Nicky always grows too attached to sentimental mementos and can never quite bring himself to replace them when they inevitably break or are lost, so he tries to do without, aided and abetted, he says, by the fact that no object could ever hold a candle to the reality of having him, Joe, in his arms and by his side every day of their long lives.

But if he hadn't had Joe, if he the only love he found had been with a mortal... he would have wanted something to hold on to. Joe would bet all his sketchbooks this Nicolò has something of his lover hidden in the most secure of his safehouses – perhaps a ring or another necklace, perhaps a lock of hair – but that man, whoever he was, had been important enough that Nicolò had wanted something more, something to keep close always. Something to remind him, always.

Perhaps he ought to be more curious about his own double and the people who claimed his heart, but he isn't. If he looked hard enough, he's sure he could find traces of them in this very sketchbook.

“Do you want to write them something? Leave them a message?”

“Maybe. If I can think of something. Do you?”

Nicky huffs. “The only thing I can think of is telling the Yusuf here to please, for the love of humanity, grow out his hair, but I fear that would not go down well.”

Joe laughs softly. “No, it wouldn't.” A mournful sigh. “Too bad. You know I like your hair longer as well.”

Nicky runs his right hand through his hair, or at least tries, and Joe knows, _knows_ he is rolling eyes. “My usual haircut would qualify as longer than this.”

“I don't think your double would appreciate advice in that sense, either.” Nicky snorts again, irritated. “When do you have to start dinner?”

“I don't. Their Nile volunteered.”

Joe unconsciously tightens his hold around him. “Good. Remind me to thank her later.”

Nicky chuckles, amused. “I don't think she did it for us. Not in the way our Nile would.”

“Still. If it gets me more time with you,” And away from them, from their wide, incredulous eyes and their constant, grating nervousness. “I'm grateful.”

Nicky hums contentedly.

For a long, long time, they don't speak, just sit close and bask in the other's presence.

A while later, Nicky steals the sketchbook and starts leafing through it slowly, carefully. Joe shifts to lay his head on his shoulder, his eyes closed against the sun. He still knows the exact moment when Nicky sees, when he gets it – his love has known him for nearly a thousand years, too. Of the two of them, Joe has always been the one who attaches memories to places rather than objects.

Nicky presses a kiss to the top of his head, grasps his hand and holds it tightly. “I'm glad you weren't alone, either.”

All around them, the light changes, the shadows grow longer. Soon, they'll have to let go and go back to the others, but not yet, not yet.

“We'll have to figure out our sleeping arrangements for tonight,” Joe sighs morosely.

Nicky goes very, very still, as only a sniper can, and Joe almost winces – it hadn't occurred to him yet and he wishes he hadn't brought it up so early.

Nicky grits his teeth, his grip on Joe's hand tightening just short of pain. “Tomorrow morning we better be back. If we're not, all bets are off and those two will just have to deal with it.”

“The others will find it... unsettling.”

“They can deal with it, too!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nicolò and Yusuf: We are completely different people, our counterparts can't possibly understand us.
> 
> Joe and Nicky: * _figure out all their secrets within 15 minutes and only because they were busy with the whole bodyswap across dimensions thing for the first 10_ * 
> 
> **Translations**
> 
> _Ya amar_ : my moon  
>  _Sono qui, amore mio:_ I'm here, my love  
>  _Hayati_ : my life  
>  _amore mio_ : my love
> 
> The icon of the Black Madonna of Czestochowa, patron saint of Poland, is housed at Jasna Gora monastery.  
> I am not saying Nicolò was at the siege of Jasna Gora in 1655 (Swedish invasion of the Polish-Lituanian Commonwealth, aka the Deluge, 1648 - 1667) where he met a nice Polish man, buuut... he was at the siege of Jasna Gora where he met a nice Polish man, who sadly did not survive the Deluge.  
> That's how his association with Poland started: he has returned there as often as he can and more often his Andromache would like. He also met another nice Polish man or two through the centuries, so the medal has become a way to remember all of them.


	3. Home

Nicolò wakes up and the first thing he sees is his sabre resting in its scabbard by his side, his necklace draped carefully over the hilt. He snatches it quickly, as though it might disappear, and brings the medal to his lips as he slips the chain over his neck. Instead of getting up, he lays back down, clutching it in his hands like a lifeline. He feels whole again.

Yusuf wakes up, thankfully alone, and the first thing he sees is his sketchbook – definitely his this time, he remembers the last drawing: the market in Heraklion, back when it was still called Candia. He wonders if the other him or the other Nicolò recognized it, even if they could never have guessed its importance.

The next page he had left blank, but now it's not: there's a note in his own handwriting, one single sentence. _Peace be with you_ , it says, and two signatures underneath. He suddenly wishes he had left something for them, too.

Nicky wakes up – not in the kitchen, thank God, he's up under the rafters where they all usually sleep, though the makeshift pallet next to his is empty. It looks like Andy's, too. He sits up quickly, but Joe is right there, across the room – _his_ Joe, with his beautiful curls and his lovely beard and he can't hold back a sigh of pure relief. He mentally thanks their doubles, too, for changing their own sleeping arrangements, though Joe is still too far away for his liking.

Ah, well, it's soon remedied: Nicky gets up, crosses the room and slips under Joe's blankets.

Joe immediately turns on his side and wraps him in his arms, sighing contentedly. “Hey,” he mumbles, his voice sleep-rough.

“Hey.”

“We back?”

“Yes.”

He pulls him closer, pressing his face against the back of his neck. “Good. Stay?”

Nicky smiles, covering Joe's hands with his own. “Always.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heraklion is the capital of Crete. During the Venetian occupation (1204 - 1669) both the capital city and the island itself were renamed Candia. Yusuf had a Significant Relationship with somebody who lived there.
> 
> A brief explanation of why Nicky is glad he didn't wake up in the kitchen that I couldn't work in the text: the mountain cabin where they are currently staying is seriously tiny, there's a single room downstairs, the kitchen, and the room under the rafters where they all sleep.  
> Nicolò "first line of defense" di Genova sleeps downstairs, and that's where Nicky woke up when they switched bodies. 
> 
> This is the end of the story: thank you to all who read it, left kudos or commented! I hope you liked it, even if this is more of an epilogue than a chapter.  
> Some of you have asked for more of this verse - Yusuf and Nicolò getting together or the other team/family members reactions: I did try to write more of the latter, but it wasn't coming out right. You wouldn't be really getting anything we didn't already hear from Yusuf and Nicolò/Joe and Nicky, and that's not what I want in a story. 
> 
> I'm stopping here, unless the muse eventually decrees otherwise. As I said before, if anybody else wants to have a go at the prompt and fill in the gaps I couldn't, feel free to do so! I'd certainly love to read it! 
> 
> Thank you again!

**Author's Note:**

> Fill for [this prompt](https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/5194.html?thread=1608266#cmt1608266) at the kinkmeme. This is only a partial fill, though, if anybody else wants to have a go, go ahead!


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